From nothing to self sufficient

Strengthening the fortress

We spent the past few days concreting in between the tires on the interior side of the wall.

Please disregard the giant finger in the way.

The actual earthships have Adobe filled in between the tires but with the high rainfall in Kentucky we chose not to use this method because it would become unstable. Once again we encounter the coulda, woulda, shoulda. We should have had the forsight to realize that we needed to use concrete instead of Adobe and not decide to skip the step all together. We didn’t fill the entire gap with concrete. We filled the large spaces with cans and such to decrease the amount of concrete used. It makes entire structure much more stable and we don’t use nearly as much concrete.

We also replaced all of the tires on the fourth layer. At first we tried pulling the tires up by first removing the dirt from the middle and then using a winch. After 20 minutes we finally got one tire back up and decided to try something else. We then rolled the tires around to the concrete pad and up a ramp. After 2 tires were put in place in less time than the first tire was put up using the winch we decided the ramp was probably the best way to go. We will see on Sunday if this still works as the best method.